The second stop of the
Northwest Tournament Series (NWTS) this year washeld under the sunny
skies in gorgeous and rural Graham, WA (U.S.) atOperation Paintball.
Now in its third season, the NWTS is the oldest and largest paintball circuit
in the Northwestern part of the United States

Located about twenty minutes
from Tacoma towards the Godly MountRainier, Operation Paintball
(operationpaintball.8m.com) is a mix-usepaintball facility featuring
a few wooded recreational fields as well as a few concept tournament fields.
For this tournament, event producers decided to use the airball/hyperball
combo field, a smaller hyperball field and an urban, village field featuring
cars, a two-story pink house and a satellite dish. All of the tournament
fields at Operation
Paintball are netted off with picnic tables for spectators to watch the
action.

The sun was hiding behind
the clouds as the typical Northwest drizzledecided to spend the
cool February day at Operation Paintball. A total of 30 young gun, rookie
and novice teams mixed it up for the second event of the NWTS season.

The Young Guns Division
was very close with strong competition from theyoung ballers. Portland
Paintball Kids 1, Naughty Dogs Jr. and a new team from Weekend Warriors
in Marquam, OR called Consumed. All of the Young Gun teams were given a
free T-shirt thanks to DYE-the NWTS YoungGuns sponsor.

Again, the Rookie Division
would prove to host the largest division of the event and the most competition.
This tournament would showcase fourbrand new rookie teams
jumping into the finals—Tilt, Asylum, Nurv and NControl Rookie. Also
present were Kaotic Impact and BK Factory RookieTeam—both of which were
in the finals for the first event last month. The competition was
so close that Explicit Chaos missed the finals by only one point.

The Novice Division was
extremely competitive with newcomers Groundhogs and Landslide joining STP
in the novice finals. Landslide, the 2002 NWTS Series Champs, were considered
the frontrunners for this event as they have brought back four of their
five players from last season andhave added Evan “Goon”
Neale from Naughty Dogs Silver to their roster.Landslide maxed both
of their finals games to win the five Works
Gunsthat were being given
out for first place. Canada's Method made the trek down across the border
for their first venture with the NWTS but unfortunately had to settle for
a fourth place finish and had to watch the finals instead of play. Hopefully,
the Canucks will fare better next time.

We are also presenting
for the first time in the Northwest a special prize event in the 7-man
format on Sat, July 12 at Operation Paintball (WA). This event is a $500
entry with two divisions (novice/open and rookie).